Wizards of Oz

"Life is fraughtless ... when you're thoughtless."

12.11.08

New 'Blog, New Post

After nearly a month as a contributor to the 'blog "Antilibrarium", I have finally offered my first post: a review of a book from my "Quantum Library", The Sea Power of the State by Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Georgyevich Gorshkov.

Here are links to descriptions of an Anti-Library (i.e., books you own but don't intend to read) and my own Quantum Library (books that lend new insights, even after multiple readings).

The Rules:1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. (Done, above)2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you'd like.

So, beginning with #5, here is an image from (IMHO) the most significant moment of the most significant battle of the Civil War: Gen. Stonewall Jackson succumbing to friendly fire.

This fateful shot, near dusk in the rugged woods of central Virginia in early May 1863, felled the maneuverist spirit of the Confederate States Army -- and left General Bobby Lee with only Longstreet's "static defense" a few short weeks later at Gettysburg. Had Stonewall Jackson been present in Pennsylvania, I have no doubt that he would have listened to Hood and his Texans' idea of flanking Meade and the Army of the Potomac well south of Little Round Top -- and many more of us would to this day be sending our income tax returns to Richmond....

Seven random facts about me:

1. I have been in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. Actually, I've been under the DMZ -- in an intercept tunnel dug by the R.O.K. into a mostly-completed tunnel from the north. It was wide enough for two soldiers to walk abreast, or for one division per hour to move through.

2. I've lived in six different states of the U.S., including (for two years) Hawai'i. So quit your whining about the price of food & gas -- we were paying nearly six bucks for a gallon of milk ten years ago.

3. Along with college buddy Tony, I used to brew my own beer. A doppelbock we brewed in the early 1990s won an "Honorable Mention" at the Del Mar Fair in San Diego -- despite being a simple extract brew.

4. My grandmother was a Marine in World War II. As was my grandfather (which is how they met, gearing up for Operation OLYMPIC and the invasion of Japan in 1945; thank God for the Manhattan Project!). Other Marines in my family include my step-dad, my uncle and my cousin. Alas, I wasn't good enough ("4-F" medical disqualification at the entry processing station after graduating from college).

5. I met my bride on a plane. I was going to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with the ski club from the Navy lab where I worked; she was going to her grandmother's funeral. She sat in front of me from San Diego to Denver, and again (a week later) right in front of me from Denver back to San Diego. (Makes it hard to be agnostic with that kind of blatant interventionism going on! :-)

6. I missed just one math question on my college prep exam (the ACT), taking my possible score of 36 (out of 35) all the way down to a 33. The question? Area of a circle. Every time I think about it, refrains of "π are square" echo in my head....

7. I once wanted to major in philosophy, probably due more to the fact that I was a lazy student incapable of serious, deep study than for any real interest in epistemology. Parental intervention (i.e., "Fine - but YOU have to pay for your tuition, books and lodging!") gently nudged me back on the physics track.

In the interest of seeing how the fairer sex addresses Rule #5, I hereby tag:

9.4.08

REVIEW: Taleb's "Black Swan"

After resting comfortably in my "anti-library" for many weeks, I recently plucked The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb from my dusty nightstand. Since I was embarking on cross-continental flights (albeit with kids), I was looking forward to punctuating the drink-and-peanut monotony of Southwest Airlines (an airline woefully unequipped for flights longer than 90 minutes) with Taleb's insights.

Since my days as a civilian employee of the U.S. Navy, where I evolved from an aspiring systems engineer to a "Science Advisor" to a manager leading the "Red Team" at U.S. Joint Forces Command J9, I have been fascinated with the prospect of "adversarial surprise". Like most analytical efforts under the loose employ of the Pentagon (which has roughly one government civilian employee [tail] for every two active duty soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines [tooth]), this was a cottage industry.

Taleb's insights echo many of our observations in the Joint Experimentation program, particularly regarding the hubris of intellectualism. His skepticism of inductive logic, his emphasis on the importance of context in perceiving information, and his lionization of Doktor Prof. Sir Karl Raimund Popper (whom I had the pleasure of driving from leland stanfurd junior u. to Cal some 20 years ago in my Nissan Sentra) as well as Henri Poincaré are worthy of note.

However, his self-referential anecdotes are reminiscent of a Tolstoy novel, and his clear disdain for planning (née prediction) creates a scotoma that pulls him into the same abyss of solipsism that consumed David Hume.

The depth of his criticisms can be summarized quite succinctly as:

Don't use quantitative methods for qualitative questions.

Nature is benign, so we can ascribe a comfortable level of determinism to our observations. New data, often obtained through technological innovation, requires modification of obsolete theories (e.g., the Ptolemaic model of the universe to the Copernican; Newton's Laws of Motion to Einstein's Special Relativity; etc.). Key to our understanding (though Taleb would probably insist we understand nothing) is the selection of appropriate parameters -- and to not get too enamored with your own theories, especially if it involves any vestige of "free will".

Fallible? You betcha! Yes, we are inclined to fool ourselves. Yes, we try to cram too many variables into our formulae in some vain hope that we'll "get it right". And yes, our institutions -- particularly financial ones -- tend to reward the wrong kinds of behavior (q.v. Prof. Clay Christensen's The Innovator's Dilemma, in which Clay digs into corporate failures vice successes, finding that Wall Street rewards bad behavior). But Taleb's diatribe against the folly of "epistemic arrogance" has created another confirmation bias that only casually addresses the issue of scale when considering complex topics.

I understand that I am straying far from the "anchor" of many blogfriends (John Robb, Art Hutchinson, General of the Hordes Subadei, ARHerring, zenpundit, Chet Richards) who have offered glowing praise for The Black Swan. Perhaps it's my naïveté (or perhaps that I'm a product of the California public school system), but I honestly don't see our civilization marching toward "Extremistan". Quite the opposite: While our awareness of remote events has increased, and our networks have grown exponentially, I believe that the diffuse topology of our networks actually dampens the impact of an extreme event.

Consider the "Butterfly Effect". Do you really think a butterfly flapping its wings in Jakarta is going to eventually cause a hurricane in New York City? Or do you think the minor perturbation is absorbed locally without cascading into some kind of resonance? Yes, there are examples that illustrate the dire consequences of unplanned resonance. Taleb (who waffles at the end of his book as half hyperskeptic, half intransigently certain) abandons the Gaussian bell curve, yet -- with only a single mention of Albert-László Barabási -- firmly embraces Power Law scale invariance as normative.

Despite Taleb's too-casual treatment of scale, I think he would agree with George E.P. Box's statement (c. 1987) that "...[A]ll models are wrong, but some are useful." Abandoning our dogmatic devotion to certainty is essential in any creative, innovative enterprise -- and can reveal hidden opportunities, and hidden abilities.

This requires that we reexamine how we define "success". In my adopted hometown of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the best Calutron operators (the electromagnets that separated Uranium isotopes for the LITTLE BOY bomb at Y-12 during the Manhattan Project) were not the scientists from Berkeley who designed them, but seamstresses with no scientific training. And how many Americans would consider Tommy Franks or Norman Schwarzkopf as the most successful U.S. commanders in the Mid-East? What about Tony Zinni (who didn't win a major theater war, but may have demonstrated even greater skill by avoiding one)?

While many of us point to 9/11 as a "Black Swan", I can say unequivocally that it had a far less dramatic effect on my life than Continental Flight 196 on March 6th, 1993. Could I have predicted when or how I would meet the woman that would be the mother of my children? Of course not.... But was I open to the possibility, and adaptive enough (when jabbed in the ribs by Helen from Purchasing to move up one row on that flight) to take advantage of this blessing?

That may be the best value of Taleb's Black Swan: to jar us out of our collective comfort zones, to remind us how ignorant we truly are, and to encourage us to "Be Prepared!" Good advice, regardless of whether you live in Mediocristan or Extremistan.

____Update: Überblogger Zenpundit has graciously linked this review -- and will have his own review posted this weekend. (Thx Zen!)

3.2.08

123 Meme (c/o ZenPundit)

1. Pick up the nearest book ( of at least 123 pages).2. Open the book to page 123.3. Find the fifth sentence.4. Post the next three sentences.5. Tag five people.

Within arm's reach to my left is Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras. From page 123:

... They also instill an intense sense of loyalty and influence the behavior of those remaining inside the company to be congruent with the core ideology, consistent over time, and carried out zealously.

Please don't misunderstand our point here. We're not saying that visionary companies are cults. We're saying that they are more cult-like, without actually being cults.

21.12.07

Tagged: Christmas Meme

Local friend Citizen Netmom has been tagged by LissaKay to provide a "Christmas Meme" profile, so I'm following her lead. Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.2. Share Christmas facts about yourself.3. Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

3. When do you put up the tree?Me? Never. My bride? Usually just after Thanksgiving.

4. When do you take the tree down?After our annual Epiphany Party in early January.

5. Do you like egg nog?Not as much as what you can put *in* the eggnog.

6. Favorite gift received as a child?A BMX bike when I was 12 years old.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?Yes (a small porcelain one).

8. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?At an office "gag gift exchange", I ended up with a plastic hand pedestal that was supposed to be a remote control holder. We kept it in the closet until the follow year's gift exchange.

9. Mail or email Christmas cards?Despite my comments on "convenience" above, this is one area where we go all out -- mail is the only way for us. Our family photo is planned months in advance (this year's card was from a February trip to Mexico, complete with Santa hats in the luggage), cards are ordered shortly after Halloween, and labels printed the week before Thanksgiving. We have made a habit (perhaps bordering on Obsessive-Compulsive :-) of mailing them the day before Thanksgiving -- sort of a green flag for friends and family of the start of the holiday season.

15. Travel at Christmas or stay home?We usually travel -- we have family and friends scattered throughout the country.

16. Can you name all of Santa’s reindeer?Yes (though it might take me a while). Don't forget Olive! (As in "Olive, the other reindeer..." :-)

17. Angel on the tree top or a star?Angel.

18. Open the presents Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning?One selected gift on Christmas Eve, the rest on Christmas morning.

19. Most annoying thing about this time of year?Some people let themselves get too stressed out -- so courtesy seems to be too rare this time of year, ESPECIALLY on the roads and parking lots.

20. Do you decorate your tree in any specific theme or color?Classic white lights, gold trimmed ribbon, with lots of sentimental-value ornaments.

21. What do you leave for Santa?Milk and cookies, of course. And some carrots on the lawn for his reindeer.

22. Least favorite holiday song?Anything with "singing" animals.23. Favorite ornament?Our Macy's-New York City "Curious George" ornament (showing George climbing the Empire State Building in a clear glass globe) from their 75th Anniversary Parade.

24. Family tradition?Besides what's already been described here (decorations, cards, gifts), we have an emerging tradition of performances. Both kids play in holiday piano recitals, and Renee always performs with the church choir in their Christmas performances. Also, Shelby has performed in The Nutcracker three of the past four years now -- and Jarrett has said he wants to be a "party boy / mouse soldier" in next year's Nutcracker.

25. Ever been to Midnight Mass or late-night Christmas Eve services?Yes, a couple times (once in San Diego, when my mother-in-law visited us there; and another time in Minnesota at her church).

I will be passing this "tag" on to the following blogfriends (updated to link to their replies):

Interestingly, there has been a good deal of honest (and sometimes contentious) replies to these posts. Some admit their personal lack of service, while others see the resurgent public interest in community service as a lack of confidence in "central governments". Could it be the looming anniversary of 9/11 (and last week's KATRINA anniversary)? Or the impending U.S. presidential election and a definitive change of administration?